DUI Checkpoint in Hollywood Tonight (+More)

The Los Angeles Police Department will be back in Hollywood this weekend in its never-ending hunt for drunk drivers.

This is your opportunity to not to end up in jail. The AAA of Southern California estimates that the price of a DUI these days, including legal costs, court fees and insurance increases, is nearly $16,000.

The LAPD actually wants you to know that cops will be looking for you if you booze-up and get behind the wheel. Officials say that checkpoint warnings actually reduce drunk driving because you'll think twice about it. Here's the 411:

-Tonight from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. the LAPD will be operating a checkpoint on Sunset Boulevard and Orange Grove Avenue in Hollywood.

-Tonight from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. the Santa Monica Police Department will join in on the fun by conducting a checkpoint somewhere within that city by the sea (cops aren't saying exactly where).

-Tonight from 4 p.m. to midnight extra police cars and motorcycles will be prowling the streets of downtown L.A. and the Eastside area known to the LAPD as its Hollenbeck Division (which includes Boyle Heights, El Sereno, Montecito Heights and more). The department calls it a DUI "saturation patrol." We call it frightening.

-Tonight from 5 p.m to 1 a.m. another DUI saturation patrol will be happening, this time in the LAPD's 77th Street Division area of South L.A.

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Dennis Romero is an L.A. Weekly staff writer. He formerly worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian and, as a young stringer, the New York Times.